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Bethesda veteran says we could be watching Fallout TV shows 'for 50 years, just like Lord of the Rings,' and 'it could be an IP that your grandkids are playing'

Veteran Bethesda producer Jeff Gardiner predicts Fallout's longevity, highlighting the gaming industry's growing influence and the potential for decades of Fallout shows, drawing comparisons to franchises like Lord of the Rings.

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Veteran Bethesda producer Jeff Gardiner reckons there's a good chance the Fallout IP endures for many more decades to come.

Making an appearance on The Boss Rush Podcast (timestamped here), Gardiner explained how public perception toward video games has changed since his early days as a game designer back in the early-2000s, a time when people thought of the medium as "the red-headed stepchild of entertainment."

Gardiner said he would attend parties in Los Angeles, presumably amongst people working in TV and film, and he was seen as a "passing curiosity" due to his involvement in video games. Today, however, Gardiner said the bigwigs in Hollywood will talk to video game developers "more than some TV runners and other things, because video games have taken so much of the mindshare and consumer spending."

This bodes well for the Fallout series, of course, which uncoincidentally spawned a critically acclaimed TV series at Amazon Prime earlier this year with Fallout season 2 already in the works. Meanwhile, Fallout 5 has only fairly recently been confirmed and will be releasing after the highly anticipated Elder Scrolls 6 - which is likely still several years away from launching.

"It's great to see that the stories and worlds we create are as respected as - I'm not comparing it to Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, please don't take this out of context - but they're in the conversation," Gardiner says. "There could be Fallout shows for 50 years, just like Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying there will or won't be, I'm not a prognosticator. But it could be an IP that your grandkids are playing. We're still talking about Lord of the Rings and that was written in the 40s, so you just don't know."

It certainly isn't inconceivable that a video game series as beloved and enduring as Fallout could still be popular many decades from now. After all, Fallout itself is already 27 years old, while Elder Scrolls just passed its 30th birthday earlier this year. Not to mention even older video game series like Mario and Donkey Kong, which are more than 40 years old. What's another 40?

In the meantime, here are the best RPGs to get lost in today.